1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to financial data processing techniques. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to electronic purchasing methods and apparatus.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Many cashless purchasing transactions in commerce involve the use of a transaction card, such as a credit or debit card, for providing payment for a product or service to a merchant. As such cards have become more ubiquitous, so also has the infrastructure supporting the use of such cards. What was a simple relationship between a card issuer and a cardholder has evolved to include intermediaries providing authorization services and financial distribution services. The infrastructure has come to facilitate on-line or near real-time transaction authorization in an electronic purchasing environment.
In order to conduct transactions over such a network, businesses typically establish a series of accounts with a card issuer and distribute transaction cards associated with each account to their employees or agents for use in executing cashless transactions. To minimize fraud and abuse in the purchasing of goods and services, several authorization standards have been established. For example, when establishing a credit account, an account issuer or client may place fixed restrictions upon the financial account, such as by transaction amount or merchant type. Restrictions may include account limitations such as, for example, account level amount limits (e.g., an account may have a total credit limit of $5,000). Merchant restrictions may be identified by one or more allowable standard industrial codes (SICs), merchant identifiers (MIDs) or the like.
An account issuer, upon the establishment of an account, may employ a third party authorizing agent to provide authorization services and strictly enforce account limitations as agreed upon between the account issuer and client. The account issuer may inform the authorizing agent of the account of the specific terms under which an individual purchase may be authorized.
Once an account and any desired account restrictions have been established, the account issuer provides the client with information necessary to initiate cashless transactions. Such account information generally includes an account number and expiration date as assigned by the account issuer to the financial account. The predominate form of providing account information to the account user is to provide a physical transaction card generally taking the form of a credit card, debit card, smart card or the like, and, in some instances, bearing an account number. A client or employee thereof may then initiate a transaction with a merchant by physically providing the card at a merchant's point-of-sale terminal and/or by submitting the account number by other known means to cause funds to be provided to the merchant.
In commonplace transaction processing systems, upon receipt of an account number, the merchant initiates an authorization request process to verify that the transaction parameters of the present transaction are within the fixed boundaries or limitations placed upon the account. Existing transaction processing systems utilize account-specific limitations (e.g., such as an account credit limit, etc.). Each authorization request compares the details of the current transaction with the previously established account-specific limitations associated with the account.
Payment authorization requests may electronically pass through a third party agent, such as an acquiring bank as designated by a bank identification number (BIN) of the authorization request, and additionally may route through a network such as those operated by card associations or entities (e.g., MASTERCARD, VISA, DISCOVER and AMERICAN EXPRESS) prior to reaching an authorizing agent for comparison of account parameters. The authorizing agent then compares the transaction parameters for conformance with account limitations. The authorizing agent then may issue an authorization response including an acceptance or denial indicator for the transaction.
Funds generally are not transferred from an issuer bank to a merchant bank when the merchant requests an authorization. Funds typically transfer as a result of a settlement process. A settlement process generally occurs at a periodic time such as evenings or nights when a merchant transmits to an authorizing agent and presents a series of accepted and authorized transactions occurring throughout the previous period and requests financial settlement of such transactions. The merchant initiates a settlement request with the authorizing agent (if used) which generally comprises the account number to be debited, the amount of the debit and other information such as SIC and BIN designators. As part of the settlement process, the authorizing agent issues a settlement request to the account issuer.
After settlement, and typically within some set period of time, the account issuer provides an account summary to the client for notification of payment due or for other record keeping purposes. In such generic authorization processing as described above, billing account information contains relatively little, non-descriptive information typically limited to account number, a transaction amount and, perhaps, limited merchant information, such as the name and location of the merchant.
Further shortcomings of the authorization process as described above are noteworthy. First, a payment authorization performed by the authorizing agent provides a regulation of transactions by either declining transactions originating at a merchant having a prohibited SIC goods/services designator, or withholding authorization from transactions that exceed fixed available account level limits. Such an authorization process approves transactions of values less than the available account level limits transpiring at non-prohibited merchant point of sale terminals having a non-barred SIC goods/services designator.
Existing authorization techniques do not provide a method or system for enforcing strict transaction parameters prior to authorization of restricted transaction types on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Additionally, existing techniques do not permit an account issuer to create varied transaction authorization parameters without re-initiating account establishment procedures.
A second shortcoming of the authorization processing in the existing technologies relates to periodic billing account information sent from the account issuer to the client. As previously described, the account summary information generally includes only an account number and a transaction amount, and may further contain limited merchant information such as the name and geographic location of the merchant. The client is not consistently provided with detailed information pertaining to each specific transaction but rather is presented only with information showing an amount and information identifying the merchant at which the transaction occurred. That is to say, a client generally does not have a tracking mechanism to track the execution of a specific transaction and the billing of such a transaction on an account summary. In prior configurations, the client may only discern that a certain amount of money, e.g., a transaction amount, was exchanged with a specific merchant.
A further shortcoming is that the account number has been exposed to numerous parties not related to the client in performing the transaction over the purchasing network. If the account number is intercepted during the process, unauthorized parties may attempt to fraudulently use the account to purchase items.
A further shortcoming of existing purchasing programs is that each employee authorized to participate in the program is issued a payment card. This, unfortunately, can lead to fraud, abuse, error, or other mistakes. It would be desirable to limit the potential for such mistakes. Further, issuance and management of the distribution of individual cards can be expensive and error-prone. Accordingly, what is needed is an improved payment system that addresses the above-identified problems in certain existing technologies.